The Worst Idea
by VGWrighte
Summary: It was undoubtedly the worst idea they had ever had.  Sam and Daniel friendship.


The Worst Idea

Based Upon Stargate: SG-1

Set during Season 5, fits into cannon. Sam and Daniel friendship. Little bit of referral to Sam / Jack relationship.

Also, apologies to everyone with any kind of legitimate knowledge of hieroglyphs or archeology or anything that I have blatantly misrepresented or just plain screwed up.

- . - - - . -

In retrospect, he had no idea what they were thinking. It was a bad idea from the get go and they should have realized that. Now, they were facing the fact that it had - quite literally - been the worst decision of their lives and maybe the worst thing that had ever happened to either of them.

What decision?

Sam and Daniel went on a date.

Not a "friend date," but a "date date."

Now they were avoiding each other, like the plague. Daniel had just gotten out of a meeting that had simply been the most uncomfortable meeting he had ever had to endure - ever. Sam had been giving a report on something, he didn't even remember what because he had been too busy trying not to make eye contact with her. He had been fidgety. The General had asked him if anything was the matter. He had, of course, lied in response.

Sam had been off her game as well. She stumbled over her words. She tripped over the technically complicated sentences which usually rolled off her tongue with such dexterous grace.

Now he was practically running from the briefing room, trying to get into the elevator before Sam packed up her things and walked in the hall, making awkward eye contact before heading for the stairs. Or, worse yet: joining him in the elevator.

"Daniel!" Jack called, rushing out the door of the briefing room to catch him. Daniel slowed just enough to let Jack catch him in the elevator. "What's going on?"

"What do you mean?" Daniel asked, feigning ignorance as the elevator doors closed. He involuntarily winced as he saw Sam step into the hall, thankfully she didn't turn fast enough to see him.

Jack, of course, noticed. "You know what I'm talking about." He gestured to Daniel, forward, then back to Daniel. "That little circus with Carter during that meeting."

"I don't want to talk about it." He figured that he wouldn't be able to convince Jack that nothing had happened, but he might get away with not talking about it. Jack didn't like to talk about feelings or other stuff, which suited Daniel just perfectly right then.

"If there's something going on, I need to know about it," Jack said, slipping into the ever-practiced Air Force officer mode.

"No, it's fine. Nothing happened."

"What happened?" Jack asked, sensing Daniel's untruthfulness.

"Nothing," Daniel repeated a little too forcefully. He released a sigh of relief as the doors opened, thankful he could escape to his lab.

"Liar," Jack said, following him to his lab. "What happened?"

Daniel remained silent.

"Well, if you won't tell me, I'm sure I can get it out of her." He turned to leave.

Daniel was trying to decide if was bluffing. Deciding telling the truth was better than risking Jack having that conversation with Sam, he spoke. "We went on a date," okay, so he blurted it out.

Jack stopped mid stride and turned on his heel, marching back to Daniel stiffly after closing the blast door. "You what?" he whispered harshly.

_Oh great,_ Daniel thought. _He closed the door, now no one will hear my screams._ "We went on a date," he repeated, sounding a little less like a bad romantic comedy.

"Why?" he asked, anger creeping into his voice.

"I don't know," Daniel threw his arms up in frustration. "It seemed like a good idea at the time. I mean . . . She and I . . . You know . . . Neither one of us . . . Well, you know . . . Neither one of us has had . . . a significant other recently and we were thinking that both of us were single, and we're friends . . ."

"So, you went on a date?" Jack said, deadpanned.

"Oh God, it was awful, Jack."

"What happened?"

- . - . -

"What transpired?" Teal'c asked.

Sam looked from Janet to Teal'c. She was surprised about how interested he was. "Well, okay, so I dressed up, right?" She turned to Janet. "I wore that black skirt with my nice black strappy sandals."

"The ones with the low heels?" Janet interrupted.

Sam nodded. "Yeah, those ones. With a white v-neck and that red sweater I bought when you and I went to Denver."

Janet nodded. "Oh, that one. Good choice."

"Major Carter, please continue," Teal'c spoke up again.

"Sorry, Teal'c. Anyway, he picked me up. He was wearing a white sweater and black pants. Nothing too fancy, but nice, right? So we drove to that new Italian place on Summit. In silence."

"Silence?" Janet repeated.

- . - . -

"Silence?" Jack repeated.

"Oh God, and dinner was worse," Daniel said. "We typically have so much in common, but the only things I could think to talk about were . . . stupid and she kept talking about advances in astrophysics. There were HUGE awkward pauses. We both skipped dessert, thankfully, trying to end the awful evening."

Jack continued to glare.

"So, then I drove her home. And I walked her up to her door. And we didn't know whether we should kiss or not. And then I knew she was trying to decide whether or not to ask me in for coffee or something."

Jack snatched Daniel's forearm and glared at him. "What did you do?" he asked deathly quiet.

"Oh God!" Daniel shouted, realizing why Jack was so angry. "No! We did not sleep together! God, Jack. If we had, you'd have already seen my resignation. Oh God, no!"

Jack released Daniel's arm and took a deep breath.

"Jack," Daniel lowered his voice, regaining some of his composure. "I know you two have a thing that's not really a thing. I'm sorry about this. It was a bad idea because you and I are friends and it was a bad idea because Sam and I are friends. It just was a bad idea all around."

Daniel watched Jack think for several seconds. "Daniel, I - um . . ." He took a deep breath. "It could be a hell of a lot worse guy than you."

Daniel nodded. He knew what Jack was trying to say. He wasn't saying that he was okay with it, but he was saying that he would rather Daniel be with Sam than some guy who wouldn't take care of her. He knew that he shouldn't have done it, but it was okay.

Jack turned to leave. He hit the switch and the door slid open. He turned. "You've got to fix this with her, 'cause I'm not letting either of your quit and I'm sure as hell not letting you act like this off-world."

Daniel nodded. "Yeah, I'll fix it." He didn't want to, but Jack was right. He needed to talk to Sam. He couldn't avoid her forever.

- . - . -

"Well, it's not like you can avoid him forever," Janet said.

"I know, I know," Sam said, leaning into her hands and hiding her face. "I don't want to talk to him. It's going to be weird."

"I cannot sit between you while on a mission," Teal'c said.

Sam looked up and studied his expressionless face, trying to discern whether he had made a joke or not. "Fine." She pushed back from the table and stood up. "I'll go talk to him."

- . - . -

He ran into her in front of her lab. "Hi," they both said awkwardly.

There was silence.

"We have to talk," they said together again.

Again there was silence.

She simply pointed to her lab and they filed in quickly.

Silence reigned.

"It was a bad idea!" Daniel finally spat.

"I know. I don't know what we were thinking," she answered.

"We were thinking that _Sam and Daniel _is a great friendship, so why wouldn't _Sam and Daniel_ be a good couple. We wanted to prove that we were normal enough to have a relationship. We are. We are normal enough to have a real relationship. Just not with each other."

"I agree. Let's just never do that again."

"Okay."

Again, there was silence.

"Why isn't it better yet?" she asked, looking around, as if the answer existed in the room somewhere.

Daniel shook his head. "You know what we should do?"

"What?"

He rounded her desk, getting closer to her. "We should go on a friend date."

"What?" she asked flatly.

"You know when you have a really bad date, you go out with your friends to complain about it?" When Sam nodded, he continued. "We should do that."

A smile grew over Sam's face. "We should."

"Want to go to that new burger place?"

"The one with the bottomless fries?" she asked, excitement unmistakable in her tone. She did like her French fries.

"Great, I'll come get you at - say, five?"

"Sounds great, I'll see you then."

Daniel headed towards the door, but stopped when she said his name. "Yeah?"

"You are not going to believe this guy I went out with."

- . - . -

He honked when he pulled into her drive. She came out quickly wearing a pair of jeans and a plain t-shirt with a jacket. Daniel looked down at himself - jeans, plain sweater - excellent "friend date" clothes.

She jumped into the passenger seat. "Hey, Daniel," she said with a smile.

"Hey, Sam," he replied and threw his vehicle into reverse.

She immediately started fiddling with his radio. "NPR, Daniel? Really?"

"I was channel surfing," he defended.

"Yeah, right."

Okay, she was right. It was one of his presets. But he had three Ph.D.s, he could listen to NPR if he wanted to.

They made it to the burger joint, her threatening to tell Jack about his NPR addiction. They ordered their food and sat down getting their soft drinks.

"So, how was your date?" Daniel asked.

She smiled. "Oh, Daniel, it was awful."

He laughed.

"He started talking about how ancient forms of Egyptian hieroglyphs have too many similarities to Mayan hieroglyphs to be coincidence. Something about depth, size, and distance of the two . . ."

Daniel gave her a blank 'hey, that's interesting' stare.

"Oh, don't get me wrong. That is interesting. I want to know how they carved those with such accuracy without a laser. But, come on, that is not first date conversation material."

"Listen to this, you'd love this woman I had a date with. She started talking about the new ion drive idea. Apparently four different universities are developing them taking completely different routes. MIT, apparently, has an innovative approach about directing the ions through a nozzle using an electromagnetic field."

Sam gave him a blank stare.

"Again, very interesting, but not first date material."

They both laughed.

- . - . -

They sat in the car for several minutes after he pulled into her driveway, laughing hysterically. "Alright," Sam said, wiping the tears from her eyes. "I have to go to bed."

"Good night, Sam."

She got out of the car, "Good night, Daniel."

She headed towards her door in the light of his headlights. He, like a good friend, was waiting for her to get into her house before heading home himself. She paused and headed back to his car. He rolled down her window when she came back.

She didn't say anything for a minute, realizing what she had planned was kind of corny. "This is what _Sam and Daniel_ is supposed to be."

He smiled for a second and nodded. She watched him, ready to say something. He burst into laughter. "That was really bad."

She laughed too. "I know."

Their laughter died after a minute, she still leaning on his car door. She ducked her head inside and kissed his cheek. "See you tomorrow." She turned and headed back towards her house.

"Night, Sam!" she turned back to see him leaning out the driver side window. She waved as she pulled her keys out of her purse and let herself in. She locked the door behind her and watched Daniel pull away from her front window.

_Well_, she thought while taking off her shoes and heading toward her bedroom, _that turned out alright._

- . - - - . -


End file.
